This post is part of the Ideological Turing Test Challenge. Go to the tab above for an overview and remind yourself of the voting and commenting guidelines here. What’s your best reason for being an atheist? See, I hate this question, because you don’t NEED a reason to be an atheist. You don’t need to justify nonbelief, people who believe in a God need to produce a “reason” for that belief. I think it was Dawkins that started the comment... Read more
This post is part of the Ideological Turing Test Challenge. Go to the tab above for an overview and remind yourself of the voting and commenting guidelines here. What’s your best reason for being an atheist? The evidence. The God of the Bible– and what else could “God” mean, in our culture?– just doesn’t seem to be operating in today’s world, speaking to prophets, working miracles, and so forth. It’s logical to extrapolate backwards and assume that such a being... Read more
This post is part of the Ideological Turing Test Challenge. Go to the tab above for an overview and remind yourself of the voting and commenting guidelines here. What’s your best reason for being an atheist? The best reason for being in atheist is that there is quite simply no reason not to be. I mean this in the most basic terms possible: There is no verifiable evidence for the existence of a supernatural force(s) and/or “creator” of the universe.... Read more
I’m about to post the first of the Turing Test Contest entries. For ease of reference, I’ve created a new tab at the top of the blog that you can use to easily find entries and (starting Friday) voting links. I’ll be posting 2-3 entries per day from now til Friday afternoon, and then I’ll open up a Google Form you can use to vote on which ones you thought were really written by atheists and which you think are... Read more
This is a continuation of a post from this morning about an incident of possible harassment at a skepticism conference. Read that one FIRST. Even among people who agreed that not all harassment has to result in physical assault to be threatening and dangerous, there was a lot of disagreement about the appropriate way to handle the incident and the ongoing discussion in the atheist blogosphere. Some of the people I disagree with have premises about privilege and gender that are too... Read more
If you follow the atheist blogosphere, you’re probably aware of an internal debate about sexual harassment and the appropriate way to respond to it. Very briefly: skeptic activist Rebecca Watson gave a speech about religion’s “War on Women” at an atheist conference. During the conference, she and a group of people hung out in the hotel lobby sharing stories until around 4am. When she left to go to bed, one man followed her and buttonholed her in the elevator, asking her... Read more
Everyone entered in the ideological Turing Test challenge is finishing up their answers to the atheist slate of questions, and I’ll be starting to post them on Monday. But, since a lot of people were interested, I had to draw lots, so there wouldn’t be an unmanageable number of responses. I may repeat the experiment in the future, but, for now, Verbose Stoic has decided to play along on his own blog. So, if you can’t wait for Monday, head over to... Read more
I appreciate the Christians weighing in on why they oppose gay marriage and trying to explain how they think people are harmed. One genre of response has turned up in thread and is fairly widespread, so I’ll try to address it. Anonymous wrote: Many people are wondering why infertile heterosexual marriages are considered moral and praise worthy while homosexual “marriages” are not. The reason is that in an infertile heterosexual marriage the sexual organs are, at least, being used for... Read more
–1– This week’s Quick Takes theme (for as long as I can sustain it) is interfaith dialogue. If you’re not a regular reader of this blog, I’d like to invite you to stick around this week to help judge the our first ever ideological Turing Test (inspired by Bryan Caplan). This week, a slate of atheists and Christians will all answer questions intended for atheists honestly, or as they expect atheists would answer them. It’s up to you to vote and... Read more
…is Clement XI! Why, you ask? Simply put, he is responsible for my favorite application to date of overwhelming theocratic power. You may remember, several weeks ago, I mentioned in a Quick Take that I was delighted that Rinderpest, a viral disease infecting cattle, had been wiped from the face of the earth. It is only the second disease in history to be deliberately eradicated by humans (small pox was the first). When I originally posted about the Rinderpest... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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